


The Concept of Dualism

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, Mutual Pining, Post Episode s02e19: Dod Kalm, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 08:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22847281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: This was for the 2020 X-Files Fluff Exchange. My prompt was from admiralty: Anything involving MSR and Melissa Scully. Keep it UST-y please! Late S2
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 19
Kudos: 140
Collections: X-Files Fluff Fanfic Exchange (2020)





	The Concept of Dualism

**Author's Note:**

  * For [admiralty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralty/gifts).



Melissa Scully had studied Chinese cosmology--the duality of yin and yang, how seemingly opposite or contrary forces are complementary, interconnected and interdependent in the natural world. She had never seen two people who exemplified the concept more. The skeptic, the believer; the redhead and the brunet. She had seen them embrace once, and they seemed to even physically personify yin and yang; her head tucked under his chin, interlocked and perfect. 

How they were so blind to the match would be funny if it weren’t so frustrating. 

From everything she knew and had read, someone’s soulmate could not also be their twin flame, but every time she looked at them, she wondered. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

There was a familiar scent in the air, an earthy musk underlying the chemical, industrial smell of the hospital. Scully cracked her eyes and turned her head to see the familiar auburn curls of the back of her sister’s head standing by the bed next to her. Mulder’s bed. 

“You here to break me out?” her voice was still rough from their ordeal in the Norwegian sea. 

Melissa turned toward her, smiling. 

“Wouldn’t be my first time sneaking someone off a Naval base,” she said. 

Scully returned her smile. She knew of at least three boyfriends who Melissa had managed to both sneak onto and off of a Naval base in their teen years. 

“You should have been a spy,” Scully said. 

“The MPs only care if everyone has a seatbelt,” Missy said, moving over to Scully’s bed as she sat up, “a little bit of light flirting and they don’t bother checking the trunk.” Melissa nodded her head toward Mulder. “He being released today, too?” 

Scully glanced over at her partner, who was asleep. He’d only regained consciousness the day before. 

“No,” she said, her voice softening, “he was a lot worse off.” 

Melissa gave her an assessing look. 

“You thought you were dying. You thought you were both gone.”

Scully took a breath, nodded. 

“Did you tell him?” Melissa asked her. 

Confused, Scully looked up at her sister. 

“Tell him what?” she asked. 

Melissa ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek then shook her head. 

“You guys are hopeless.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

Her bones felt creaky. She’d been so thankful that she’d been able to use a wheelchair all the way to Missy’s car at the hospital, and now that she was home, she needed to lean on her sister just to get down the hallway and to her front door. 

Missy unlocked it and helped her through the apartment and into bed. 

Once her sister had pulled the covers up and over her, she sat on the bed next to her and said “I’m going to stay with you for a few days. Until you’re back on your feet.” 

Scully didn’t bother arguing with her. She didn’t have the energy.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Three days into her convalescence, she had just awoken from a nap on the couch when her sister handed her the phone. 

“It’s for you,” Missy said, her eyebrows up.

“Hello?” she answered. Melissa sat on the other end of the couch and didn’t even pretend not to be interested in the call. 

“Scully, it’s me.”

She was so relieved to hear his voice, she forgot to police her features and she looked up to see Melissa watching her closely, with a small smirk on her face. Mulder said something she didn’t hear. 

“I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m getting sprung,” he said.

“Already?” she asked; she was barely on her own feet. “I want to talk to your doctor.”

“Not on your life,” he said. “They moved a surly ensign into the bed you were in and he’s not nearly as nice to look at.” 

Scully blushed, and Melissa quirked an eyebrow. Scully wanted to disappear into the cushions like loose change. 

“Do you have someone to pick you up?” she asked, “someone to stay with you?”

“I’ll be alright,” he said, and she could practically see him morosely plucking at the blanket in his hospital bed. 

“No you won’t,” she said, trying not to get indignant, “Mulder, I still barely have the energy to get from the bedroom to the kitchen, and I wasn’t nearly as sick as you were.” 

Mulder was silent. She tried to think of any close friends Mulder could call on to help him out and could only picture the Gunmen. 

“Do you want me to call your mother?” she hedged. 

“Not if you ever want me to talk to you again,” he said, “don’t worry about me, Scully, I’ll get a cab home. All the food delivery guys know me. I’ll get by.” 

“Mulder…” she said, when Melissa held her hand out for the phone. Scully handed it over. 

“Dana and I are going to come pick you up,” she said, “what time are you being released?”

Scully could hear a dull mumbling from the receiver. 

“It’s fine, she could use the fresh air. We’ll see you then.”

Scully leaned back on the couch. 

“Thanks, Missy,” she said, “if you can help him get settled into his apartment, I’m sure I can find somebody to-” 

Melissa cut her off. 

“Oh, I’m not taking him to his apartment,” Missy said, matter-of-factly, “I’m bringing him here.”

XxXxXxXxXxX

“Missy, you have to get back to work.”

They were more than halfway to the base, and Scully’s arguments against her sister’s plan of nursing them both back to health in Scully’s apartment were getting weaker and more grasping. 

“You know I don’t, Dana,” she said, “and anyway, he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.” 

Scully couldn’t argue with that. Melissa turned onto the exit for the base. 

“Where is he going to sleep?” Scully asked. 

Melissa sniffed a small laugh, then said, “the couch.”

“Then where are you going to sleep?” 

“Trim those toenails, little sister, I’m bunking with you.”

When they were kids, Scully and Melissa had been forced to share a bed on family vacations; Melissa always complained that Scully kicked her in the middle of the night and dug her toenails into Missy’s shins. 

Scully couldn’t help but glance down to consider her pedicure. Melissa saw her look and stuck out her tongue at her. Some things in life had changed. Some things hadn't. 

When they pulled up to the entrance, Mulder was waiting in a wheelchair, a bored-looking orderly standing behind him. Scully connected eyes with him as she got out of the shotgun seat, and he flashed her a self-conscious smile. She had to prop a hand up onto the top of the car before she opened the door and slid into the backseat. 

It took Mulder two tries to stand from the wheelchair, and then the orderly and Melissa both had to swoop in on either side to help him into the car. Once they had his door closed, he leaned his head back against the headrest and turned so he could talk to Scully. 

“I look better than I feel,” he said, as Melissa slid into the driver’s seat and started up the car. 

“Well you look like hell,” said Scully goodnaturedly, and Mulder licked his finger and made a check-mark in the air. 

They rode the rest of the way back to Scully’s in silence. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

They’d barely gotten Mulder into Dana’s apartment before he passed out on the couch, his feet hanging off of the side, his shoes still on. 

“Jesus, Dana,” Melissa said, pulling a blanket off the back of the couch and draping it over him, “what happened to you guys out there?”

Her sister didn’t say anything, just smiled a sad smile at her and sunk into one of the chairs at her dining room table. 

Melissa came up to her and grabbed her hand, asked her if she wanted any tea--Dana looked pale from the day’s excursion and smiled at her gratefully. 

There was a blend she’d gotten from her herbalist just for her sister, which Dana turned down in lieu of a cup of Earl Grey, but she set aside a cup for Mulder, who was making snuffly sleep-noises on the couch. She watched Dana stealing surreptitious glances in his direction as she sipped the mug in front of her. 

“Have you slept with him yet?” she asked, point-blank. Sometimes all her sister needed was a bit of a verbal slap to confront realities she wasn’t ready to face. 

“What? Jesus, Missy.”

Melissa had confronted Mulder in his own apartment when they both thought Dana was dying--she’d called him out, told him he needed to tell Dana how he felt so that she--and he-- would both at least know before she was gone. Bless the man--he’d been in a very dark place, but he’d gone to Dana’s bedside and he’d stayed there. How they both still seemed to operate as though they weren’t absolutely in love with each other was beyond her comprehension. Truth be told, it pissed her off.

She rose and lifted her sister’s empty cup and walked it to the sink. 

“You should fuck,” she said over her shoulder. She could feel her sister’s glare through the back of her head. 

When she turned around, Dana was still scowling at her. She held up her arms in surrender. 

“I’m done,” she said, all innocence, then, under her breath, “but you should.”

Dana ignored her. 

“You should rest too,” she finally said, when she felt the tension in the room ease a bit. Dana nodded. “Do you have a key to his apartment? I can go pick up some clothes, grab his toothbrush.”

“In my desk,” Dana said, nodding toward the secretary desk in the corner. 

Melissa found it quickly, the key having been labeled with the meticulous care her sister seemed to pay to all things but her own heart. 

Dana had shuffled halfway down the hallway to her own room when she called to Melissa over her shoulder. Melissa paused in the doorway. 

“Feed his fish?” Dana asked, her voice sounding husky and weak.

“Of course,” she said, then, “Back in a bit.”

She drove over the river to Alexandria. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

His apartment was nearly as dark as it had been the only other time she’d been there, this time without the oppressive feel of the anger and resentment that had rolled off its resident in waves. Dull light crept in from yellow streetlights outside the lone window above the desk, supplemented by a dim, buzzing glow from the aquarium. It smelled like leather and dust. 

She tipped in probably more fish food than was necessary, but she wasn’t sure how long Mulder had been gone, and wasn’t entirely sure when he’d be back. Both he and Dana were the worse for wear. The fish went at the food with ichthylogistic zeal, darting to the surface like scaled torpedos. She’d once read that people who kept fish tended to be the happiest and most optimistic of all pet owners, but something about that didn’t ring true--at least not here in Mulder’s space.

Once she’d found a lamp and switched it on, she took her time looking about, her knowledge about her sister’s partner leaving vast swathes of empty story she hoped to fill. 

There were next to no family pictures up with the exception of one framed photo of his missing sister that sat on his desk. Everything else seemed fuscous and impersonal. The space was somehow both Spartan and cluttered and left her feeling a vague sadness. She half-wished she’d brought sage to smudge the place. 

When her sister had told her of her new partner named Fox with alternative and “out there” theories and beliefs, she thought when she finally met the man that she would find a kindred spirit. Instead, she stood next to Dana’s comatose body and met a man that seemed more lost than anything else, spiritually rudderless and no more in tune with the collective unconscious than your average grocery store cucumber. 

Missy shook her head and went off in search of clothes and a Dopp kit. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder was sitting up, rubbing sleep from his eyes when she walked back in. 

She dropped the bag next to the couch. 

“Some things for you,” she said.

He looked around, like he wasn’t sure where exactly he was. 

“Thanks,” he said. 

“Can I get you anything?” she asked him, looking at him curiously, assessingly. She wondered how many times he’d been in her sister’s apartment. 

“I could use a trip to the WC,” he said sheepishly. 

“How much help with that do you need?” she tried to keep the anxious distaste out of her voice, but he picked up on it anyway. 

“Just a hand up,” he said. She pulled him slowly to his feet and then had to walk with him to the bathroom door. 

“I got it from here,” he said weakly. She didn’t shut the door all the way, just in case. 

While he was occupied, she poked a head into Dana’s room and found her asleep on top of the covers, her hand curled under her chin. She looked fifteen. Melissa bussed an empty water glass from her bedside table, and by the time she made it back into the hallway, she heard the water running in the bathroom, and waited at a courteous distance from the door until Mulder shuffled out of it. 

He took one look at her and gave her an acquiescing look, if not a bit pained for having to do so. She helped him back to the couch. 

“You hungry?” she asked him once she had him settled. 

“Just water,” he said. He pronounced the word like ‘wooder.’

She brought him a glass. He nodded his thanks and took a deep draught. He gave the liquid in the glass a long look before setting it on the coffee table. He fell back against the couch, once again exhausted. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Melissa Scully was an odd duck, of that he had no doubt, but she did love her sister fiercely, and that accounted for a lot. However, given his druthers, she would not be the first person he would pick to nurse him back to health after living 50 years in three days, though she had a certain Scully charm. 

He figured he’d be lucky to get through the next few days without a sage garland around his head and a crystal up his ass. 

The goal was to convince the Scully sisters he was fine enough on his own, which was going to be something of a tall order as he could barely walk to the toilet without feeling like he was going to keel over.

They made small talk for a few minutes before he heard Scully emerge from her bedroom, shuffling down the hallway slowly, though at least under her own power. Her hair was a bit of a mess and she had a pillow crease in her cheek. 

He was still surprised that no matter what state she was in, she looked like Christmas morning. 

Scully gave him a tired smile and slowly slid into a dining room chair. 

“Has your sister ever mixed you a drink?” he asked Melissa, apropos of nothing. 

“No, but I’ve seen her open a bottle of wine with her shoe,” Melissa said. Intrigued, Mulder cut his eyes to Scully, who smiled enigmatically.

He adjusted the pillow under his head. 

“If she ever offers, I’d advise emptying your pantry of canned fish first.”

Scully laughed, and he smiled, heartened.

“Inside jokes are my favorite,” Melissa said, sarcastically, “more please.”

“You’re no fun,” Mulder said. 

“Says the guy who needs help standing up,” said Melissa, not unkindly. 

“Stop flirting, the both of you,” said Scully from the kitchen. She looked to Melissa and gave her a look Mulder couldn’t quite read, “Make him drink some Gatorade, would you? He needs the electrolytes.”

Mulder looked at her, his eyes intense, but she would not meet them. She was the only woman he cared to flirt with. Then Melissa handed him a big orange bottle over the back of the couch and blocked his view. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

The lines in his face were plumping out, making him look more like himself. Before long he’d be back on his feet, out of her house and entirely too attractive for his own good. 

Mulder had a tendency to complicate any situation he was in and his constant presence here in her own space threw her off balance. 

She’d once overheard another agent in the bullpen comment that she was “Spooky’s Sidekick,” which surprised her as Mulder had always treated her like an equal. If he was the towering Garfunkel, she was the slighter Simon, and no matter their difference in stature, the work they produced was harmonious.

She remembered pointing a gun at him out on the Icy Cape, the way his oatmeal heather henley was damp with his sharp smelling fear-sweat. How he reached out and grabbed her from behind, then held up a calming hand. He was forever saving her, and she him. 

After Arecibo, she could see him giving in to a life of paranoia and madness, holed up in a room of floor-to-ceiling phone books, cell phone in a potato chip bag. She suspected that she may be his lone tether to sanity, the string to the balloon that only wants to float away.

Melissa was heating up soup for dinner, so Scully walked to the couch and helped Mulder to the dining table, and they both watched her sister with jealous eyes as she drifted about Scully’s kitchen with the easy energy of robust health. 

Dinner was a quiet affair. No one talked much, and Melissa was watching the two of them with such interest that Dana wanted to kick her under the table. 

After Melissa cleaned up the dishes and wiped down the table, she said, “Listen, how about I put on a movie for you guys. I have to go home and run a few errands. Will you be okay until I get back?”

“I’ll have to ask my mom,” Mulder said tiredly.

Scully just said “Sure, Missy.”

They each took opposite ends of the couch and Melissa dropped the remotes on the cushion in between them. 

“Back in a bit,” she said, and the door closed softly behind her. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Melissa took more time than she ought to have, but she wasn’t sure how long it took two repressed Federales to each let down their guard. She wasn’t trying to play matchmaker, but she wasn’t trying not to, either. 

Melissa had the empathetic talent of a horse when it came to reading energies, and those that ran between her sister and Fox Mulder both crackled and arced in an electric tumult, and also flowed low, like a fast moving dark river, seeping over the stones of obstacle like a mercurial fluid. She’d never felt such a connection.

She opened the door quietly. There was no sound on the other side, and when she walked in, it was to a room filled with the blue light of the television with nothing playing. She crept into the apartment and that’s when she saw the two heads on the couch, both asleep and tilted toward each other, as if in sleep their subtle bodies took over. 

She walked to the couch and placed a blanket over both their laps and left them until the morning. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder woke up to the unfamiliar feeling of a warm body pressed next to his own. He still felt stiff and creaky, but he also felt refreshed, which up until now, sleeping had not done for him. 

He cracked an eye and found that he was tilted sideways on Scully’s couch, his head on the armrest, his feet on the floor. Tucked into his side, with her head on his hip, was Scully, who was curled up tightly, with a blanket tucked under her chin. The bright rays of the early morning sun filtered through the tree outside her living room window and made bright patterns on her ceiling. 

When he was at his most tired on the ship in the Norwegian Sea, when he’d given in to the inevitable, he’d let himself imagine that old, aged Scully sitting next to him was his. That she’d thrown in her lot with his, and had spent the last 50 years by his side. It was a nice dream to die to. 

He was reminded of that as he sat there, and let himself wake up slowly. He knew she would pull away as soon as she woke, herself. He continued breathing steadily, hoping to keep her there as long as he could. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

She was comfortable--almost impossibly comfortable--warm and well rested and the arthritic creaking lassitude from the week before seemed to have finally dissipated. She came awake slowly, and it wasn’t until she’d buried her face into her pillow that she realized her pillow was a person. 

Mulder. 

He didn’t move under her, so there was a chance he was still asleep, for which she was grateful. It wouldn’t do to be caught huffing your partner on your own couch after spending the night with him. 

She kept her breathing deep and hoped he thought she was still asleep. 

XxXxXxXxXxX

Melissa awoke knowing something was a little off. She cracked an eye. Dana’s side of the bed was still made, which meant she’d spent the night on the couch with her partner. She couldn’t help a satisfied smile from breaking on her face. 

She dressed and tiptoed to the bathroom to conclude her morning ablutions. When she finished, she walked quietly into the living room and stood before them on the couch. She could tell by her sister’s breathing that she wasn’t asleep, and Mulder seemed tense--he was probably awake, too. 

“Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” she said, and both pairs of their eyes slid open and looked right at her, guiltily. “Comfortable?” she said, enjoying their obvious discomfort at being discovered like this. 

Dana sat up ramrod straight, pushing off her partner, who raised himself a little more gingerly and with less haste. 

“I’ll make coffee,” Melissa said brightly and moved off into the kitchen. 

Mulder excused himself to go into the bathroom and Melissa noted that while he was still moving slowly, he was able to make it under his own power. Dana joined her in the kitchen, looking surly. 

“Sleep well, Dane?” she asked as she flicked on the coffee maker, and turned to look at her sister. 

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” Dana said, then pulled a couple of mugs from the cabinet and handed them to her. 

“It’s true, I am,” she replied, lining the mugs up on the countertop. “First time sleeping with your partner?” 

Just then the bathroom door opened and Mulder shuffled out. Dana caught her eye and gave her a look, mouthing  _ STOP _ . 

Missy shrugged and turned to the coffee maker which had just finished brewing a pot. She poured herself a cup and took a seat at the table, watching them with interest. 

They traded cream and sugar without saying a word, each knowing how the other took it. They were easy with each other and seemed to have a practiced choreography. 

Mulder particularly seemed to have a bead on her sister and moved around her with an easy charm. The way he seemed so in tune with her, Melissa began to wonder if he kept track of her menstrual cycles, deferring to her on high lunar days and slipping dark chocolate into her pockets. 

Finally, Dana leaned back against the countertop and took a sip from her mug. 

“I’m feeling much better, Missy,” she said, “you should head home today, get back to your life. I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me. Us.” 

It was a polite but curt dismissal.

“Oh, I don’t mind staying,” Melissa said, just to see what her sister would do. 

“Not necessary,” Dana said with just a touch of sharpness. 

Mulder looked toward the other side of the room and took a long sip of coffee. He knew better than to push her when she was like this. Melissa did too, but she was an older sister after all, and pushing was her prerogative. Nevertheless, she decided to ease back. 

“At least let me make you guys breakfast,” she said, and she saw her sisters shoulders fall a bit in relief--she must have been expecting more push-back. 

After everything had been cleaned up and put away, Melissa made her way into Dana’s bedroom to pack up her things. She could hear the murmur of light conversation through the doorway. When she came out into the living room with her bag over her shoulder, Dana was wrapping a blanket around Mulder’s shoulders as he lowered himself onto the couch, her eyes squinted with affection. Mulder looked up at her gratefully. She watched them share a long look. 

She cleared her throat and Dana straightened up.

“You off?” she asked and made her way over. 

“I am,” Melissa said, hugging her sister tightly and giving her shoulder a squeeze. “You guys let me know if you need anything.”

Dana smiled at her and Mulder mumbled a quiet thank you. 

“The tea mix from my herbalist is on the counter by the sink,” she said, as she opened the door, then quietly to Dana “and I left condoms in the bathroom.” Dana threw the lock the second the door closed behind her.

As she walked down the hallway, she could feel the energy she’d left behind pulsing between the two partners, a complimentary, symbiotic qi. They would find their way to each other, she was certain.

Eventually. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Because this was a story for my regular beta, and I really wanted to keep it a surprise, I had to do some serious Cloak & Dagger shit. Part of that was to use other betas, whom I CANNOT thank enough. sulivan, linl0, DanaScullyMakesMeFeelAutopsyTurvy, and OnlyTheInevitable, I seriously could not have done this without you. Thank you for both the beta, and for managing my anxiety. 
> 
> As for admiralty: girl, I hope you like this... I had you big time.


End file.
